Darwin and Evolution

Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection were prime areas of philosophical debate during Jo Labadie's formative years. Skepticism about the literal truth of the Bible had been voiced from the time of Copernicus, but the Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century emphasized scientific inquiry and scoffed at theology. Geology dealt the first powerful blow to Genesis with the study of rock formations. The brilliant English geologist, Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) maintained in his Principles of Geology (1832) that sedimentary layers were formed over eons of time. Undoubtedly this prepared western society for the ready acceptance of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859) despite an intensely hostile reception by religionists who insisted on separate creation of each species by God, and others who were dismayed by the principle of survival of the fittest as the dominating force in evolution.

In some ways, Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871) was even more contentious than his earlier volume, as in it he met head-on the question of human evolution. Darwin not only stated that physical man had evolved from other forms of life but that human systems of law, customs, and morals arose, not from any divine source, but from our animal heritage. To a reader like Jo Labadie this implied that our laws and our habits could change in response to a higher mode of thought.